1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to components for weapon system. More specifically, this invention relates to multi-lugged bolts, bolt carriers, and barrels for rifles.
2. Description of Related Art
A wide variety of bolt, bolt carriers and barrels are well known in the art. Typically such devices have lugs of the same size, regardless of the load bearing on the lugs, and which are evenly spaced around the face of the bolt, with the possible exception of the area required for the extractor. The following well known rifles have multi-lugged bolts and bolt carriers: the Johnson Model 1941 rifle and machine gun developed by Melvin Johnson; the M16/AR15 and Stoner 63 Weapons System developed by Eugene Stoner; the AR18 Rifle developed by Armalite; the Daewoo military and Sporting Rifles developed by the Korean company Daewoo; and the Steyer AUG rifle made in Austria. Other similar rifles are well known in the art.
It is desirable to provide a bolt and bolt carrier for rifles that permits ammunition to be fed from a variety of ammunition feeding devices, such as box magazines, clip magazines and ammunition belts while providing improved fatigue strength during the firing sequence. It is also desirable to provide a bolt and bolt carrier device that can be easily adapted in the field by the operator without the use of special tools to reconfigure the gun to fire a variety of cartridges, including but not limited to: 0.223 Rem (5.56xc3x9745 mm); 7.62xc3x9739 mm; and 5.45xc3x9739 mm. It is desirable to provide a bolt carrier that is designed to accept the bolt and to glide over a variety of magazines. In particular, it is desirable to provide a bolt with improved lug strength and failure resistance.
Therefore, it is the general object of this invention to provide an improved bolt and bolt carrier for automatic rifles that is compatible with receiving ammunition from a variety of feeding devices.
It is a further object of this invention to provide an improved bolt and bolt carrier for automatic rifles that can be easily adapted to fire a wide variety of well-known cartridges.
Another object of this invention to provide an improved bolt and bolt carrier for automatic rifles with improved lug strength and durability.
A still further object of this invention to provide an improved bolt and bolt carrier for automatic rifles that has an improved failure rate.
A further object of this invention to provide an improved bolt and bolt carrier for automatic rifles that has heavier lugs on each side of the extractor, that are adapted to receive without failure additional loading.
These and other objects of this invention are achieved by the invention as described herein.